Zip line

Zipline as a rescue device (45 m) over the Pegnitz

The zip line , including cable car or flying fox , Switzerland tyrolienne or Zip (as in France), Austria guerrilla slide in Ecuador Canopy (Engl. Zip line, ziplining ), is a cable connection between two different high points for crossing Gorges and rivers. This is used to transport people or loads hanging on a roll or a snap hook .

Zip lines with static rope

Hocking Peaks Adventure Park, Logan, Ohio

Double pulley

Only tested static ropes with low elongation may be used for zip lines.

→ Main article: Safety and tensioning of ropes in the article Rope Bridge .

Security-relevant systems are implemented twice. In addition to the carrying rope, a static safety rope is always used, which is tensioned about one meter above the carrying rope. A pulley runs on each of the two ropes , which are connected to one another by a sling and a screw carabiner. Special closed double rollers are used for this. Alternatively, screw carabiners can be used. Screw carabiners are hung with the screw sleeve pointing downwards so that they cannot unscrew due to vibrations. The load or person is hung on the lower roller with a tape sling. When transporting people, the connection between the climbing harness and the sling is to be made with two screw carabiners attached in opposite directions. The person must not be able to reach into the rope or the pulley and even heavy persons must be free from touching the ground at all times.

A third rope, the brake rope, is used to brake. This is guided by a helper via a deflection attached to the attachment point. This means that the pulley or, in the event of difficulties, the person can be retrieved.

For anchoring to a tree, it should have a diameter of at least 20 cm. There are two systems for fastening the ropes:

A 30 to 50 mm wide sling is placed twice around the tree and a screw carabiner is attached to the loops
The rope is looped around the anchoring tree several times and the end is secured to a second tree, a strong branch or the supporting rope itself. Protect the bark of the trees.

When anchoring in rock, a separate anchoring is required for each rope attachment. An axial tensile strength of 15 kN is achieved with bolts . To be on the safe side, each end of the rope is also connected to the anchorage of the other rope. The rope is attached to the carabiner with the mountain rescue knot.

The rope is attached to the carabiner with an HMS knot and secured with a slip knot and an overhand knot ( mountain rescue knot ). This means that the fastening can be relaxed and released at any time and on both sides, even under load. The rope is tensioned with a pulley. The deflections are fastened with a belt loop with a cross clamp knot (never with an accessory cord ) and guided over a roller. After tensioning, the suspension rope is fixed at the anchor point, for example wrapped twice around the tree and secured to a branch or to the rope itself. The pulley must then be relaxed (otherwise there is a risk of melt burns in the sling if it slips only a few centimeters on the rope).

In the past, it was customary for the Austrian Armed Forces to ride on shorter guerrilla chutes in the original way with a fork of a branch. The soldier held onto a Y-shaped fork of a branch that slid over the rope. You could brake yourself by twisting the fork. Even if there was an additional safety device with a carabiner, this method is no longer safe enough today.

Zip lines with steel cable

Steel ropes are used for permanently installed cable cars, for example for cable cars in high ropes courses , in climbing forests or on children's playgrounds . When using steel cables, ISO standards must be observed.

application

1,200 m into the gorge of the Río Pastaza (Baños, Ecuador)

The zip line is used to transport material in rough terrain, for example in the mountains or across rivers. It also serves as a rescue and recovery aid in mountain rescue . The transition to the cable car is fluid.

As the “Tarzanbahn”, it is a popular piece of play equipment on children's playgrounds and in outdoor training . In many mountains, tourism companies offer the opportunity to “fly” on kilometers of zip lines in valleys and gorges. The longest zipline in Europe is the double rope slide on the dam of the Rappbode dam in the Harz Mountains. There is a whole range of fun sport rope slides in the valley of the Río Pastaza in Ecuador between Baños and Mera .

Records

The longest zip line in Germany was opened in November 2012, is 1000 m in length and is 120 meters above the Rappbode Dam in the Harz Mountains. The maximum speed is 80 km / h.

Since February 2018, the zipline on Mount Jebel Jais, Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, has been the longest in the world. It measures 2,830 meters and enables a top speed of 150 km / h.

Accidents

In 2000, three young men died on a zip line through a ravine along the Caminito del Rey (Málaga province, Spain). After this and two other fatal accidents, the “Königspfad” was closed in 2001. After extensive renovation, the Steig was reopened 14 years later.

On June 8, 2000, there was a fatal accident involving a zip line in the Kanzianiberg climbing garden near Villach (Carinthia, Austria). Under the supervision of a state-certified mountain guide, a student had to overcome a 40-meter-deep gorge between two rocks. As a “high point”, the mountain guide braked the student roughly in the middle of the gorge, creating a pendulum movement. Due to this short-term loading and unloading, the securing sling opened the “twistlock” snap hook ; the student fell. The Graz Higher Regional Court acquitted all three mountain guides involved in the second instance. The Alpine Association , the Association of Austrian Mountain and Ski Guides and the Board of Trustees for Alpine Safety recommended that "Flying Fox" do without twistlock carabiners in the future and use a second carabiner.

In the summer of 2010, a 21-year-old British woman had a fatal accident on the Gorge Alpine via ferrata near Saas-Fee (Valais, Switzerland). The student had hung herself on a zip line, which was up to 45 degrees steep, with the carabiners of her via ferrata set without a safety device and then crashed unchecked against a rock. A mountain guide would have been mandatory for an ascent of this trail, as indicated by signs in various national languages at the beginning of the Gorge Alpine. A similar accident had already occurred in 2009 on the Eggishorn via ferrata (Valais), in which a 27-year-old died.

On December 19, 2015, a woman crashed into the quay wall on the right bank of the Mur in Graz (Styria, Austria) while using a zip line and suffered serious injuries. The woman was operated on and put into artificial deep sleep. In March 2016, the mountain guide responsible was convicted of negligent bodily harm. He stated that he had been distracted by several processes on the day of the accident and had therefore forgotten to hang up the brake cable. An attempted improvised braking maneuver by a second mountain guide at the other end of the facility was hardly effective.

On August 19, 2018, a 15-year-old boy reached the finish podium on the approximately 200-meter-long steel cable slide in a climbing park in Lienz in East Tyrol. He could not hold on to the target and slid back, so that he collided with his 13-year-old brother who was to be born. Both were seriously injured.

On October 22, 2019, a 50-year-old man died while using a tourist zip line attraction in Cape Tribulation, Australia. His wife survived with serious injuries. The two fell from a height of 15 meters after the rope of the zip line broke unexpectedly.

Norms

EN 1176 “Playground equipment and playground floors - Safety requirements and test methods”;
EN 1177 "Shock-absorbing playground floors - Determination of the critical fall height".

Web links

Commons : Zipline - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Anton Schäfer : Manual for the implementation of action sports events: Bungee Jumping, Rocket Bungee (catapult bungee), Sky Fly III, Flying Dog, Air Diving III, Devils Fall . BSA Verlag, Dornbirn 1998, ISBN 978-3-9500616-3-5 ( full text in the Google book search).